Historical Events  People
Denis Norden

Alternate:
Early 2000's

Current:
2018

At was alright on the night after all

Many people were surprised to hear of the death of Denis Norden in 2018 because the were sure he'd died many years earlier.

Asked about it, the consensus seemed to be the early 2000's. Many also remember watching tribute shows covering his life story at some point after this.

He died aged 96, after a prolific career spanning the cinema, radio and TV and wrote scripts for several Hollywood films.

There was a "farewell tour" in 2007 which people could be confusing with the tribute.

It'll be Alright on the Night

He's best known for the ITV show of out-takes from TV and cinema, which pre-dates their popularity seen today on extended DVD cuts, YouTube etc. He wrote his first script aged 19 for the BBC, where he them teamed up with Frank Muir from the late 1940's up to the 1960's.

He cut a striking figure - he was over 6ft 4" - and was instantly recognisable with his famous outtake clipboard. The idea for It'll be alright on the night actually came to him in the canteen at LWT in London in 1977. He was talking about the Blue Peter episode where John Noakes had an unfortunate incident with an elephant, and he wondered aloud to Paul Smith, a producer, if they could make a show which consisted entirely of these kind of out takes. Within half an hour, they'd clinched a commission from Michael Grade. That show ran for almost 30 years until Norden retired in 2006, when he was 84.

Since we're talking about Mandela Effects and memory, how's this for a quote from him?

It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.

-- Denis Norden